Information gerrymandering.

From Information gerrymandering and undemocratic decisions by Alexander J. Stewart, et al. From the Abstract.

People must integrate disparate sources of information when making decisions, especially in social contexts. But information does not always flow freely. It can be constrained by social networks and distorted by zealots and automated bots. Here we develop a voter game as a model system to study information flow in collective decisions. Players are assigned to competing groups (parties) and placed on an ‘influence network’ that determines whose voting intentions each player can observe. Players are incentivized to vote according to partisan interest, but also to coordinate their vote with the entire group. Our mathematical analysis uncovers a phenomenon that we call information gerrymandering: the structure of the influence network can sway the vote outcome towards one party, even when both parties have equal sizes and each player has the same influence. A small number of zealots, when strategically placed on the influence network, can also induce information gerrymandering and thereby bias vote outcomes. We confirm the predicted effects of information gerrymandering in social network experiments with n = 2,520 human subjects. Furthermore, we identify extensive information gerrymandering in real-world influence networks, including online political discussions leading up to the US federal elections, and in historical patterns of bill co-sponsorship in the US Congress and European legislatures. Our analysis provides an account of the vulnerabilities of collective decision-making to systematic distortion by restricted information flow. Our analysis also highlights a group-level social dilemma: information gerrymandering can enable one party to sway decisions in its favour, but when multiple parties engage in gerrymandering the group loses its ability to reach consensus and remains trapped in deadlock.

Interesting work. I am concerned that there is some ideological intent to this given the introduction of the "gerrymandering" held in ideological disrepute even though the reality of the effect of gerrymandering is widely disputed.

Why call this gerrymandering when it actually looks like affiliative networks. Different affiliative groups use and access the same information in different ways to different ends. There is nothing nefarious about that.

The root issue is well acknowledged already "Our analysis provides an account of the vulnerabilities of collective decision-making to systematic distortion by restricted information flow." The right complains about the dominance of the left in academia and in the mainstream media, in particular in terms of its tolerance for false knowledge and fake news. In other words, the right is concerned that public knowledge is being skewed by the institutional biases of academia and MSM. And conservatives are, to a degree, correct.

Take a longer view, though, and I am not sure how threatening evolved affiliative networks for information sharing (AKA information gerrymandering) is. Evolved affiliative information networks are constantly evolving and adapting.

Newspapers and TV go left, talk radio emerges on the right. People will communicate.

The question becomes which evolved affiliative information networks are the most effective at generating and disseminating useful information. The five hundred year history of the modern era seems to indicate that free societies with market economies will always generate and disseminate information more productively and to better use than totalitarian socialist economies. Indeed, the former is almost always generative and the latter is almost always destructive.

Is information gerrymandering a real phenomenon - Sure, I suspect so. Is Information gerrymandering a social problem - that remains to be seen. I doubt it.